Kenya’s government may have grandiose plans for infrastructure, but at the moment, there is not even a dual carriage way between Mombasa seaport and Nairobi. Andrea’s weekly business column for the Star.
Driving on Mombasa Road to or from the coast is a beautiful trip through a stunning landscape – in principle. In reality, you will most likely spend a lot of time overtaking trucks. Like an irregular strand of beads, they weave along the entire road, generating a steady hum, feeding micro-economies of butcheries, hotels, bars and food stalls along the roadside. I have long had a silent fascination with the way trucks draw a network of arteries through the continent, taking delivery of goods from the global economy at the ports, and carrying them to the seemingly most remote places.
But beyond this romance, the trucks mainly make for annoying driving, chew up the roads, and make goods more expensive.
And if you think about it, there is really no good reason for the railway from Kenya to Uganda to be in the ramshackle state it ended up in: Mombasa is the region’s busiest seaport, and Kenya is a transit country for supplies to its neighbour Uganda and beyond into central Africa. These were always significant volumes of cargo, and even more so since Uganda and Rwanda have been growing at rapid pace for years, joined by Southern Sudan after signing the peace agreement in 2005.
This simple fact has been ignored for a very, very long time until the railway merely trundled geriatrically, and infrequently, through the country whilst fibre optic cables were being laid. Of course everybody knows that improved infrastructure will yield substantial results: Even more so for our landlocked neighbours, the high costs of road transport – and currently around 90 per cent of the goods travel by road – are a serious obstacle to becoming more competitive.
Large corporates clearly see the business opportunities, whether that is GE – who recently announced their intention to focus on energy and infrastructure in East Africa in their ‘Thought Leaders Forum’ on African cities, or Toyota Tsusho Corporation who are exploring opportunities in the region. Transport infrastructure, however, is an area where it’s difficult to keep government out. And this is, in the end, the biggest obstacle.
There is no shortage of new projects being thrown around, but little capacity to implement them: The Rift Valley Railway (RVR) consortium may still be struggling, but Kenya’s Foreign minister and his Ugandan counterpart have apparently signed an agreement to build a new standard gauge railway. This is, presumably, in addition to the railway line that has been conceived as part of the giant Lamu Port development – an ambitious undertaking, at least on paper, that not only includes a new port, but also a refinery, pipeline, and even a holiday resort, although no mention whether a pirate Disneyland is also planned somewhere on the fringes to make use of some of the local talent.
Now the fact that the RVR is a narrow gauge railway line is certainly not ideal, but it’s there, still just about functional and in the rehabilitation process. Any new investor would want to know how the second and, perhaps, third railway would become profitable. Railways are major undertakings, and whilst there may be a case for an additional one, I am still concerned at the apparently lack of ability to get the first one finished. I question this lack of capacity even more when it comes to mega projects such as the Lamu Port development: It raises a number of questions for me, not the least the wisdom of having key infrastructure investments on the doorstep of a refuge for terrorists and with a fairly heavy infestation of pirates. Kenya’s port is still a major headache for importers. And the northern corridor toll road is like the proverbial undead – it has been around forever, not really alive, but not going away either. Having a Nairobi Metropolitan Ministry adds to the wage bill, but one of the most notable changes has been the replacement of shrubbery with pebbles. Pretty pebbles, true, but not really a solution to downtown congestion.
The current government, preoccupied as it is with savings its individual behinds and ogling 2012, would struggle to manage its way out of a paper bag. Grand concepts are simply not enough – they need focus, political will, and independent technocratic capacity to implement, which often fail even with the less ambitious smaller projects. With the exception of telecoms – notably a private-sector driven industry , infrastructure in Kenya is performing distinctly below potential.
Republished with permission from the (Nairobi) Star.
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